Climate change and socio-economic driving forces will affect Europe's
future freshwater resources. A large-scale water model is used to
analyse these effects and to identify ‘hot spots’ of water stress in the
Black Sea region, as an example of an area where future water demand is
expected to exceed the available water resources. Two scenarios are
analysed, describing different developments of water withdrawals.
Depending on the scenario, water stress increases or decreases due to
changing water withdrawals which are identified as the principal cause
of additional water stress in the future. According to the
‘economic-oriented’ pathway, water withdrawals are expected to increase
by 58%. In Turkey and Bulgaria where water is already scarce, a further
decrease in water availability will exacerbate the situation. By
contrast, the ‘quality of life oriented’ scenario, assuming raised
awareness to save water, results in a reduction of water withdrawals by
approximately 59%. The situation of decreasing availability and
increasing demand leads to growing competition between users and may
finally end in cross-sectoral conflicts. This type of modelling study
helps to prepare and foresee which kind of management options (in which
sectors especially, and where) would be required to reduce ecological,
economic and social consequences.